Amy Rathbun - Learning Goal Analysis

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Dynamic Earth, Prentice Hall Science, 1994,1993
Contributing Writers: Linda Densman, Linds Grant, Heather Hirschfeld, Marcia Mungenast, and Michael Ross
Earth Science, Grade 7, ages 11-12, Chapter 3, Plate Tectonics

Learning Goal:

ESS1 (5-8) POC –3

Explain how Earth events (abruptly and over time)
can bring about changes in Earth’s surface:
landforms, ocean floor, rock features, or climate.

3a Evaluating slow processes(e.g. weathering, erosion, mountain building, sea floor spreading) to determine how the Earth has changed and will continue to change over time.

What does this standard mean?
  • The Earth's continents are drifting; from Pangaea (one land mass) to present continent positions
  • Wegener's Theory of Continental Drift, based on fossil and rock formation.
  • Location of continents on Earth affects climate (weathering, erosion)
  • Sea-floor spreading/subduction (mountain building)
  • Theory of Plate Tectonics: formation/destruction of Earth's crust and its movement
  • Plate movement is caused by convection currents within the mantle.
  • Understanding how plate movement in the past changed Earth's surface can help predict future changes in Earth's surface.
  • Vocabulary: fossil, midocean ridge, ocean-floor spreading, fault, trench, subduction, plate, tectonics, divergent/convergent boundary, strike-slip boundary, convection current, lithosphere

What prior knowledge do students need to know to understand the standard?
  • The Earth's layers
  • The Earth's crust floats on the mantle
  • The mantle is made of rock that flows slowly
  • Density
  • Downward force of crust and upward force of mantle/balance - isostacy
  • Present postitons of continents

What misconceptions might students have around the topics contained in the standard?
  • The human time scale/geological time scale
  • Fossils are actual preserved plant or animal parts
  • The Earth is round like a pancake and we live on the flat, middle of a sphere